


my life ever before yours

by Morcai



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (you'll probably be upset anyway), Alternate Universe - Angels, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, M/M, Multiple Endings, Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk, over and over again, pick your favorite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is a guardian angel. Enjolras is his charge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my life ever before yours

_o. and you, my father, there on that sad height_

Enjolras has always been lucky, but his luck is the kind that comes from stumbling into a near-death situation and managing to walk out, unscratched, often without realizing he has ever been in danger.

He doesn't remember the first real exemplar of this trait of his, when he was five years old and so sick that the physician thought there was nothing that could be done. His mother insists that she fell asleep by his bedside one night and when she woke, his fever had broken. Enjolras doesn't remember much of that age, and the only memories of that particular incident he can recall with any reliability are of his mother's relief when his fever broke. She calls it a miracle every time she tells the story, and Enjolras has long since grown out of believing it truly was one.

Sometimes, on the border between sleep and waking though, he hears a half-familiar voice whisper to him, "No, little one, not now," and feels a cool hand on his forehead.

There are many such incidents, enough of them, over the years to weary even the hardiest guardian angel. And so Enjolras is fourteen when a stranger with messy dark hair keeps him from falling into the path of a carriage. The guardian angel often finds himself thankful that he doesn't truly need to eat, human though he seems. Caring for Enjolras is certainly a full-time job, even earthbound as he is now. 

He acts for many years from the outside, following his charge to Paris, remaining a stranger who is in the right place at the right time, but as Enjolras becomes deeply entrenched in the revolutionary movement, as his life becomes more and more dangerous, it becomes clear that a more direct touch will be necessary. And so the angel invents a human persona for himself, calls himself Grantaire and makes his way into Enjolras' group of students. Les Amis de l'ABC, he appreciates the joke. They cannot rely on him, though, he bends the rules simply by being here among them, the only reason he has not been ordered him home is because the time he spends tailing Enjolras back to his rooms each night has stopped the man from being attacked in the night more than a few times.

But after he joins them, he finds himself enjoying the company of the Amis more than he had anticipated, transfixed in some ways by Enjolras' words. And before he knows it, he is embroiled in the storm they have created, and it's only when he finds himself with splinters in his hands from building a barricade that he realizes what he's done, and when he reaches out, beyond his human seeming he finds his powers sharply curtailed, his Grace diminished, his sense of the ebb and flow of possibilities less sharp.

Maintaining his facade of humanity has drained him in ways he did not expect. Still, as he sips from the bottle that he's found in hand, leaning against a small table, he tries his best to sort through narrowing flow of probability. As he sorts through the outcomes they vanish, dissolving to mist as he examines them, and it isn't until he realizes that he can barely find Enjolras in the remaining handful that he thinks to wonder how much time has passed.

Surfacing from that quicksilver of what-might-be, Grantaire is struck by the terrifying quiet. When he began, the air was full of the sounds of gunfire and shouting, but now there is only a dreadful silence.

He took  _too long_.

Sorting roughly through the remaining choices, all of them bad, Grantaire takes a step forward and  _decides_.

 

_i. good men, their last wave by, crying how bright_

HIs actions have narrowed possibility to the immutable  _now_  and as he steps across the floor, debris crunching under his boots. He pays no mind to the National Guard in the room, instead fixing his eyes instead on Enjolras, who is bloody but unwounded. The words coming out of his mouth are unimportant. Enjolras is important, keeping himself from shedding his human seeming and destroying these men facing Enjolras is important.

"Do you permit it?"

He cannot die with Enjolras, but he can at least make sure that his charge does not die alone. When the rifles go off, Grantaire feels Enjolras' fingers tighten, and tightens his grip in response before his knees go out from under him and he falls into shadows.

He wakes with a slow, shuddering breath, and sits up. He and Enjolras have been moved from where they fell, laid out, hands still clasped. Slowly, carefully, Grantaire frees his hand and looks over the dead.

Prouvaire, Bahorel, Joly and Bossuet side by side, Combeferre with his glasses broken, Gavroche and Marius' Eponine side by side, alike enough to be siblings.

He looks over them all, Les Amis laid out together in death, and doesn't realize he's crying until he tastes salt.

"I failed you," he whispers, his voice breaking, and he leans over Enjolras, touching his forehead to his charge's. "I failed you."

 He can hear the music of the spheres again, the indescribably beautiful notes he cut himself off from when he chose to take physical form. Without Enjolras to keep him grounded, he's losing his corporeal self, returning to the form that is natural to him.

Grantaire presses his lips to Enjolras' brow, feeling mortal flesh give after a moment.

Pulling back, he stands. There are two livid red marks where his lips rested against Enjolras' flesh, and Grantaire simultaneously feels guilty for marring that proud countenance and is pleased that at least he can leave this one sign that he stood with these brilliant young men.

He wonders what Heaven will do with him now. What's the use of a guardian angel who is forever grieving his failed charge?

 

_ii. rage against the dying of the light_

He has failed in his duties, he knows, it burns like fire, beats through his blood. The worst part of it is that he will likely not be punished--he has allowed Enjolras to grow much older than anyone expected. He was praised the last time he talked to his elder sister.

He doesn't want to fail. He doesn't believe in revolutions, he's seen far too many for Enjolras' ideas to sway him. But for the first time in centuries, when he heard Enjolras speak, he  _wanted_  to believe. He wanted Enjolras to succeed. Standing from the table where he had been sleeping, Grantaire pauses for a moment, searching, once more, for a way to save his charge.

There isn't any way. Grantaire almost growls, following the pull towards Enjolras. There is nothing he can do, nothing except keep Enjolras company as he dies.

But stepping into the room where Enjolras stands, his back to the window and the rising sun, feels like being punched in the gut. He barely manages to shout "Long live the Republic."

Backlit by the rising sun, his hair is turned to gold by the light, the scarlet of his jacket more brilliant than Grantaire has ever seen, Enjolras looks like one of his brothers, looks as though he is made from heavenly fire and divine will. And in that moment, one slim avenue of victory opens. The cost will be high, but Enjolras will live.

If he cannot evade what is coming for Enjolras, Grantaire will give Enjolras the strength to fight his way through it.

_Elder sister, teach him well_ , Grantaire thinks, or perhaps even, for the first time in a long while, prays,  _Lord on high, accept him and forgive me what I must do_.

Crossing the room, Grantaire stops by Enjolras' side. "Do you permit it?" he asks.

Enjolras smiles and offers his hand, and Grantaire supposes that is permission enough. Clasping his charge's hand, he faces the National Guard for a moment, and then closes his eyes, not because he is afraid, but because he must concentrate. Reaching deep inside himself, he finds the link that was forged between him and Enjolras the moment Enjolras was born.

Grasping his Grace, a bit threadbare but still serviceable, he tears it free and sends it down that bond, forcing it into Enjolras. In the split-second between the order to fire and the triggers being pulled, he feels it take hold. And so, when the bullets strike home, he's still smiling.

It takes more than a bullet or eight to kill an angel, even a newborn one.

 

When Enjolras stirs to consciousness, he feels like he's been kicked all over, but other than that he feels remarkably good for someone whose last memory was of facing a firing squad. Opening his eyes, he draws in a startled breath. Grantaire is fallen at his feet, smiling slightly, blood staining his waistcoat and their hands still linked.

Pressing a hand to his chest, he finds a hole in his shirt, but below it, the skin is smooth, completely unmarked.

He can hear a faint singing in his head, and he's certain he's heard Grantaire humming similar tunes when particularly drunk.

Uncomprehending, he whispers, "Grantaire, what have you done?"

 .

_iii. grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight_

He reaches Enjolras and the man is beautiful enough to rival the glory of the host and those brilliant eyes are alight and Grantaire has never been able to stand against Enjolras for long.

"Long live the Republic!" He shouts, and then, impulsive, reckless, unsure if it will even work, he reaches into that core of himself where the song of the choirs, the voice of his elder sister, the light of the Divine rests, he tears free his Grace. It is agonizing, it leaves him breathless, and he wonders at his own actions. "I am one of them," he whispers, nearly inaudible, a last message to the family he is leaving behind.

"Long live the Republic," he repeats as he steps through the National Guard to stand by his one-time charge, now his equal, and he feels peculiarly heavy, and he should feel empty, should feel a chasm where Heaven rested until seconds ago. Instead, he feels much as he always has, and he almost dares the Guards--"Finish us both at one blow."

It is an audacious act, and he turns to Enjolras. "Do you permit it?" he asks, and there is a moment of terror because if he cannot die beside Enjolras, will he do with his new mortal existence?

But Enjolras smiles and takes his hand and Grantaire can't help but feel like the silk and terrible fire of the angelic has been replaced with sunlight and the press of Enjolras' callused fingers to his and the stink of blood and gun smoke.

He wants to tell Enjolras,  _humanity is so beautiful, how did I never see that before?_  but the captain shouts out the order to fire and instead Enjolras' fingers tighten on his and pain explodes through his chest like he has never felt before and his knees go weak. He falls but does not let go, and cannot help but think that even this pain is exquisite.

 

_iv. wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight_

Joining Enjolras, Grantaire faces the National Guard, supremely aware of the presence of the man at his side, of the rifles aimed at them. He cannot help but feel that it is horribly, desperately unfair that he has protected this young revolutionary for so long and so well, but that there is nothing he can do now, his Grace worn thin after so many years and so many incidents when he had to step in to protect Enjolras.

So Grantaire does something he has not done for a very long time.

He prays.

_Lord_ , he prays, sending the words out to the divine as best he can,  _give me the power to save this man. I know I have not been the best servant to you of late, and I have no right to your favor, but please, let this man live, that he might fight for what he believes, that he might fight for your children again. Let him live, and I will pay any price you see fit, for though you did not make me to love I love him and would see him live and fight and succeed. Please_.

Faintly, far away and strange, something responds, and Grantaire opens his eyes.

For a moment, it seems as if his prayer has done nothing, and the Guard captain opens his mouth to give the firing order.

Then Grantaire begins to glow. It starts slowly but it builds rapidly, until his whole body is consumed with blazing light and Grantaire can't help but gasp at the feeling of Grace returning to him, wrapping around him like the warmth of the back room of the Musain on a winter night.

It must be blinding to the Guardsmen, Grantaire realizes, distantly, as his Grace continues to mount, to burn green and silver and blue and gold. Human eyes aren't meant to behold this, and even this glowing spillage through his human skin will likely burn their sight away. The captain, mouth open to give the order, makes a choked noise and throws away his gun, tears streaming down his face, and the rest of the firing squad quickly follows suit.

Enjolras doesn't flinch, doesn't cry, though surely this hand must be in agony where it presses Grantaire's. Grantaire turns to him, still alight with Grace, and almost sobs. There is a pull, deep inside, and Grantaire knows he is being called home.

Impulsively, he enfolds Enjolras, for a moment, in his arms. "Be magnificent," he whispers against Enjolras' skin. Stepping back, he meets Enjolras' eyes, and in one last act of humanity, he sweeps into the extravagant bow he had so often performed, before surrendering to the call and shedding his human seeming.

 

When the barricades arise once more, years later, there will be a blond revolutionary in mourning black among the leaders, a man with sad blue eyes, a quiet air of loss, unshakable beliefs in both God and man and burn scars that wrap around his hand, as though he had once held a hot coal. His men will say that he has the devil's own luck, but he will simply shake his head and say that God moves in mysterious ways.

**Author's Note:**

> section titles come from Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"


End file.
